Payzee Mahmod | Campaign Manager, IKWRO, Women’s Rights Organisation

Photograph of Payzee Mahmod

Payzee Mahmod is a British Kurd and Campaigner at IKWRO – Women’s Rights Organisation.

She campaigns to raise awareness about and to end harmful practices including child marriage, FGM, virginity testing and hymenoplasty, drawing on her own lived experiences. Payzee has been an influential voice in leading the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Bill Campaign which achieved historic success in changing the law to ban all forms of child marriage in England and Wales. She is a member of Girls Not Brides Advisory Committee and an Obama Leader.

What one action would you like to see organisations, or the government take to drive gender equity?

Governments across the world have committed to end child marriage by 2030 through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Target 5.3 aims to “eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilations” by 2030. We will not achieve eight of the Sustainable development Goals without ending child marriage. 193 countries have agreed to end child marriage by 2030 under the SDGs, England and Wales have just met this commitment, we now need the other two member nations, Scotland and Northern Ireland to follow suit.